READING #6: THE METAPHOR

Pg21:
• Chinese call the world “the ten-thousand things/beings”

Pg 22-23:
• If there are at least 10,000 things/beings then there must be 10,000! ways we can create metaphors (links between objects)
• Argentine poet Lugones (1909) tired of old metaphors discovered new metaphors for the moon
• Lugones – every word is a dead metaphor
• That phrase is a metaphor in and of itself
• cyning – “a man who stands for the kin—for the people”
• cyning can relate to king, kinsman, gentleman
• consider – “being with the stars” – “making a horoscope”
• this paper will focus on “living” (recognized) metaphors
• patterns of metaphor – seeing metaphors as equations

pg 24-25:
• “Stars and Eyes” and “Eyes and Stars”
• Plato-“I wish I were the night, so that I might watch your sleep with a thousand eyes” = tenderness
• “the stars look down” is not tenderness but it = generations upon generations toiling looking down apathetically.
• Chesterton – “A Second Childhood” contains a “monster made of eyes” = nightmare
• Time – “flowing as a river does”
• Tennyson – “time flowing in the middle of the night.” = time is silent to us like the night


Pgs 26-31
- Borges states that writers use metaphors to make readers feel exactly how the subject of the piece feels.
- Borges also states that, "The metaphor is exactly the same in all these cases," which implies that there is a distinct pattern to all metaphors.
- The first pattern of the metaphor is that life is a dream.
- Metaphors raise a certain hesitation that gives the readers a "dreamlike essence of life."
- Borges infers yet another pattern that links sleeping and dying.
- Death is a specific type of sleep, except it is "unbroken and unbreakable."
- He also says that "all literature is made of tricks," and writers must argue the validity of their metaphors so as not to bore their readers.

Pgs 32-37
Buber-I thought of them as being wonderful poems
Book by Dujovne said that Martin Buber was a philosopher
His philosophy lay in books he read as poetry
Accepted them because they came through poetry instead of arguments
In Walt Whitman same idea can be found-idea of reasons being unconvincing
Ex) Battle and fire
Iliad-image of a battle blazing like a fire
Finnesburg-Danes fighting the Frisians
Glitter of weapons, shields, swords and so on
Seemed as if the whole castle of Finn was on fire
Important-Not that there are a few patterns, but that those patterns have endless variations
Reader who cares for poetry and not the theory will read metaphors and never stop to think that these can be traced back to a single pattern
Daring thinker would say only a dozen or so patterns exist and that all other metaphors are arbitrary games
Same as saying that among the “ten thousand things” of Chinese definition, only some twelve essential affinities may be found
Dream-and-Life Equation ex. by Cummings
God’s terrible face, brighter than a spoon,
Collects the image of one fatal word,
So that my life (which like the sun and the moon)
Resembles something that has not occurred
Last line carries a strange simplicity that gives us the dreamlike essence of life better than those like Shakespeare and Walther von der Vogelweide
Persian Metaphor
Calls moon the “mirror of time”
Astronomically-view is as it should be
Poetically-quite irrelevant
As a mirror of time is a fine metaphor
Idea of a mirror gives us the brightness and fragility of the moon
Makes us remember that the moon is as old as time
Kipling-From Sea to Sea
A rose-red city, half as old as time
Gives it kind of magic precision, makes time seem longer
Kenning
Calling the sea “the whale road”
The hugeness of the whale emphasized the hugeness of the sea
Blood is the “water of the serpent”
Notion of a sword as an essentially evil being that lapped the blood of men as it were water


Pgs 38-41
-The first conclusion on “the metaphor,” that Borges writes is that though there are thousands of metaphors to be found and understood, they can all be traced back to a few simple patterns.
-The second conclusion he comes to, is that certain metaphors cannot be traced back to definite patterns.
-He concludes his work with the statement, “it may also be given to us to invent metaphors that do not belong, or that do not yet belong, to accepted patterns.”